


Enough For Now

by KatieNuss



Series: For A Moment [2]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assassin!Robin, F/M, Gen, Renegade - Freeform, non-graphic mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 03:12:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieNuss/pseuds/KatieNuss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick and Jade are lying low for a while after stirring up some trouble--but Roy tracks them down anyway.</p><p>AU in which, after suffering torture and breaking at the hands of the Light, Dick runs away from his family and his team due to shame. Cheshire takes him under her wing and teaches him another way to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Continuation of And For A Moment.

It’s not hard to get used to the feeling of having multiple knives strapped to his body, beneath his clothes. He had been carrying around a fully stocked utility belt for nearly four years before…well, _before_.

It’s the baseball cap that’s throwing him off. He knows why he has to wear it, why Jade smacks him in the face with it every time he forgets it in a way that looks playful but is actually kind of terrifying (he’s sure she could kill him with it if she tried) before forcing it onto his head and pulling the brim down low.

It’s to hide his face from any and all cameras, and from the more unobservant passersby. Dick Grayson is still officially missing and still a regular face in the media because of it. In the caped community—it’s Robin that’s missing, and he doesn’t need Jade to tell him how much more serious that is.

But he can’t stand wearing the hat, regardless. He misses his sunglasses. They were effective in concealing his identity and they didn’t give him hat-hair—he’s fourteen, and despite all he’d been through the last few months, he is allowed to be fussy over his hair. Roy still is and he’s eighteen, and _that_ is a train of thought Dick isn’t going to follow.

Instead he focuses on the couple of people that he and Jade pass on the streets of some coastal town or another while they walk back to their current residence. The sun is down, and most of the light is provided by streetlamps and store lights. He notices that there aren’t many kids out, which makes sense, given that there’s school in the morning and it’s late. He feels oddly bitter that something as conventional as school nights applies to him less now than when he was actually attending school—because really, they didn’t apply all that much then, either.

He knows he doesn’t need to go; he’s smarter than most adults and has more real world experience to boot. Jade had never even finished Middle School, let alone started High School—but somehow that’s not as comforting as he would have liked. He knows a lot about her history, and he definitely doesn’t wish his to be any more like hers then it already is.

“Jade…?” he glances at her tentatively, careful not to lift his head too high. When he does it gives any and all cameras too nice an angle, which is bad, because again, he’s missing. But also because every time he does—and he’s done it a lot because of their height difference—she gives him an impossibly fast, impossibly painful jab to the ribs as punishment.

If Batman was a tough master, Cheshire is ruthless.

“Yes, little bird?” there’s a flicker of what he likes to think is approval in her eyes, but it’s probably just the reflection of the streetlight.

“What are we doing here?” he’d been dying to ask her since they’d arrived in town the night before, settling into a sketchy two bed motel room under the names Lorina and James Liddell. He was supposed to be her little brother, as their fake names suggested, and though they looked nothing alike, the manager didn’t seem to notice or to care.

“We’re laying low for a few days. We’ve been making a lot of trouble lately. Four targets in a month is a lot, and unfortunately it attracts the attention of some rather…troublesome people.” She sounds exasperated but there is a mischievous glint in her eyes that leads him to believe otherwise. He’s pretty sure that all the flirting she does with Red Arrow isn’t just to distract him when they fight. “And as much as I’d love to hang out with your little sidekick friends, we can’t have them catching up to us.”

“And by us you mean me,” a frown appears on his face, and he lifts his hand to rub the back of his head. He knows he’s inconveniencing her, and that if it weren’t for him she could disappear like she always did. There are too many eyes searching for his face, wanting the reward Bruce had offered for his safe return. That thought puts a bad taste in his mouth and he swallows.

“Yes.” Her voice is cold, and he flinches. She was calm most of the time, eerily so. Her conversation was light and teasing and ex _tremely_ frustrating (not that he’d ever tell her that). But when her temper flares, the person responsible is going to get burned. He hates being that person, because with Cheshire as his mistress, there is no room for failure. He has the bruises on his ribs to prove it.

He would apologize, but that would be pointless. He would still be making things difficult simply by being around, and he knows when she gets tired of keeping so low a profile, she'll just get rid of him anyway.

He needs to stop thinking about it.

The second they’re back in the motel room, she locks the door and he double checks the windows and shuts the curtains. His shoes are discarded by the door a moment later, knives removed from his torso, forearms and thighs and placed on the top of the dresser. He feels stiff with so many of them hidden beneath his clothes, partially because there are just so _many_ , and partially because Jade doesn’t allow him to keep them sheathed. If he moves too much he’ll cut himself and according to her, it's to keep him on his toes.

She’s big on being aware of every muscle and movement in your own body. He definitely respects what she is teaching him, even if he could name several less hazardous ways to learn it. Ways that wouldn’t kill you if you tripped. He’d said as much when she was fastening a particularly sharp blade to his side. Her response was that he’d better not trip.

With a relieved sigh, he slaps his hat down on top of the well-loved sweatshirt he’s planning to sleep in tonight. He messes up his hair with both hands, frowning a little when he remembers, not for the first time, that he’d had to cut it short. The style is similar to Roy’s, though a little shorter on the back and sides. When it’s satisfactorily unruly, he heads for the bathroom.

“Don’t use all the hot water this time, little bird.” Jade sighs fondly (or what he chooses to believe is fondly) from where she’s perched on the end of her bed, taking her hair out of its tight bun and letting it cascade down her back and over her shoulders. She’s beautiful, like her younger sister. But it’s a different kind of beauty. Artemis, to him, is a mash of contrasts, light hair to dark eyes and olive toned skin, devious smiles and sharp eyes to good intentions and a heart of gold. Jade is something else entirely. She’s dark, fierce, mesmerizing and above all deadly. She is a creature much like her moniker, simultaneously captivating and dangerous.

He smiles sheepishly when she raises an eyebrow, and he realizes he’d been staring. “I won’t.”

It has become a nightly ritual for him, to take a scalding shower and scrub his skin raw. It feels like he’s washing away his sins and regrets. And, sometimes, if he closes his eyes tight enough, he can even pretend he's back in the manor, cleaning up after a long patrol. It’s the only thing that gives him any real comfort—which is why it frustrates him that a shower isn’t always available. Like that job in South America, but he isn’t going to think about that.

He’s careful in cleaning his right thigh, where his second target had managed to stab him in the leg while he was gathering the courage to cut the man’s throat. The wound is mostly healed, but he takes each burst of pain in stride, refusing to use any of the coping techniques that Bruce had taught him over the years. Instead he clenches his jaw and grinds his teeth, because he deserves every last twinge of discomfort, because he came away with a stab wound, and the target hadn’t come away from their encounter at all.

Jade had been disappointed in him, in his hesitation. She said he’d been thinking too much, and she was right. He wasn’t supposed to think. On a job, he’s nothing but a tool in the hands of their client. He’s the means to somebody else’s end.

He has to resist the urge to gag at _that_ thought.

When he turns the water off, dries himself and slips into his shorts, he stops to look into the fogged up mirror, sighing at the splashes of color that are spread across his torso. When he pokes the bruises it hurts, so he stops doing that and opens the door instead to go get his sweatshirt and cover himself.

“Dick…?” The voice is breathy, deep and relieved, and before he gets a chance to see who it belongs to he slams the door shut. “Dick!” It’s Roy, and he doesn’t know why he didn’t hear him before. It was obvious from the glimpse he’d gotten of Jade’s face that they’d had words, and he should have _heard_ him. Roy isn’t supposed to be here and Dick knows that, and he knows he should have heard him and that Cheshire _and_ Batman would frown upon his idiocy. Both of them taught him to be aware of his surroundings, to listen, and apparently he's losing his touch, because when he was Robin he would have known Roy was there.

“I told you, Red, he’s got no interest in seeing you. _Any_ of you.” That isn’t true. He does have interest in seeing Roy. He desperately wants to see all his friends, in fact. It’s just that the part of him that would be humiliated if they saw him like this? That part of him is way stronger.

“And you expect me to believe he wants to stay with _you_? Come on, Jade.” He sounds like he doesn’t believe it for a second and that makes the metaphorical knife in his gut twist. Red Arrow is practically obsessed with the League of Shadows (Cheshire in particular, though he’d never say it), so it's likely, _extremely_ likely that he’d been tracking Cheshire even before she’d gotten herself a partner.

That meant that Red Arrow, more importantly the part of him that was purely _Roy_ knew about all of the reprehensible things he’d done and saw the evidence showing that it _wasn’t_ Cheshire and still refused to believe that it was her companion.

“Hey, I’m good to him.” She purrs, and he can sense more than see the sultry smirk that she probably has plastered on her face. This must not have satisfied Roy, because she continues. “He doesn’t want to be around people who will treat him like he’s a porcelain doll or like he’s incompetent. And we both know how you heroes love to _fix_ things, Red.”

There are some heavy footsteps (Roy) and some feather light ones (Jade) and a smacking sound as a hand lands flat on the bathroom door he’s hiding behind. “Jade, I’m not _leaving_ until I get to talk to him. _Alone_.”

Dick’s stomach flips and he rests his forehead against the splintering wood of the doorframe.

A few moments pass, and he can _feel_ the tension bleeding off of them and seeping under the door and into the bathroom to suffocate him. Then there’s a knock and it disappears. “You heard him, little bird. He’s not leaving until you two have a little heart to heart, so get out here and start talking it out so I can take a shower already.” She sounds agitated, so even though he’d love nothing more than to refuse and scream like a petulant child, he straightens up and opens the door.

There’s a long second before Roy reacts where Dick realizes he’s not in uniform—he doesn’t have a single thing to conceal his identity, and somewhere in his head a voice says “I _knew_ it!” because this means he and Jade really do have a personal relationship and that all that flirting really _was_ meant as more than a distraction during battle.

“Hey, Dickie,” Roy breathes, his eyes scanning all the exposed flesh on Dick’s torso and making him suddenly and painfully aware of how messed up he looks. He steps forward when Jade pushes past him and into the bathroom, not relaxing at _all_ when he and Roy are finally alone, and there’s a door separating them and Jade.

Dick’s eyes flicker to the sweatshirt he has on the dresser, realizing that Roy is between it and him, and that should he try to move past him, Roy would probably think he's trying to leave and he’d grab him and he’d be _touching_ Dick, and he really, really doesn’t want him to notice how much thinner he’s actually gotten since the last time they saw each other.

So instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and hunches his shoulders, as if that would actually _hide_ any of the bruises or those damned scars.

But Roy doesn’t ask about any of that, instead following Dick’s line of vision, and, apparently realizing what the issue is, he unzips his own hoodie and shoves it into the smaller boy’s hands. “No, I can’t—”

“Just take it, kid.” He wants to fight him on it, he does, but Roy just looks so earnest, and it’s so strange and unsettling that he just takes the oversized sweatshirt and slips it on, zipping it up to his neck and crossing his arms again.

It smells like old spice and leather and gasoline—and he realizes Roy must have ridden his bike here. The scent is so familiar and safe that he immediately feels vulnerable and vile all at once, and when he hears Jade turn the shower on, he wishes it was _him_ in there instead of her. He feels like he’s going to be sick (which would do nothing to keep Roy from dragging him home) so he sits on the end of his bed, hugging one of his legs to his chest.

“Why are you here, Red?” he sees Roy wince, and Dick thinks it’s because he didn’t refer to him by name, but instead by the nickname Cheshire has given him. Because Roy _knows_ Dick is trying to distance them by avoiding familiarities.

The older boy drops into a sitting position beside the younger and pulls him into a bone crushing hug, breathing a sigh of relief into Dick’s cropped hair. He’s digging his fingers into Dick’s bruises and unintentionally driving that metaphorical knife deeper into his abdomen.

“Because I’m _worried_ about you, Wonder Bread, we _all_ are.” Roy’s voice is shaking, and that’s wrong, because Roy’s voice doesn’t _shake_. Roy is strong, and stubborn and immovable. His voice doesn’t shake or quiver or waver because Roy is in a constant state of _whelmed_. And the fact that he isn’t any of those things right now, except maybe stubborn, is terrifying and so _wrong_.

Dick pushes against his chest with one hand and his bicep with the other, trying to loosen Roy’s _death grip_ on him so he can _breathe_. The archer takes the hint and relaxes his hold, but only just. “Don’t be. I’m not your problem anymore.” He tries to sound cold but his voice betrays him and breaks on the word ‘problem’.

Roy threads his fingers through Dick’s damp hair. “You’re not a problem, Dickie but you are _mine_ to deal with. You’re my friend.”

“Not anymore, I’m not. I’m not your friend or your family or your teammate. I’m not _Robin_ anymore, Red. I’m not even on your side. So you shouldn’t worry about me. You can’t.” he curls his fingers in the fabric of Roy’s sleeve, and he feels guilty because his voice came out exactly as harsh as he’d wanted it to.

“No matter what you call yourself you are my friend, kid. It’s not that easy. No matter what happened to you or what you may have _done_ —”

“What I’ve done, Red, is unforgivable. I told you, I’m not _Robin_ anymore. I’m not Batman’s sidekick. I—I’m...” he grits his teeth and spits the name. “I’m _Renegade_. I’m a…I’m a _murderer_.” His voice betrays him again at the admission, cracking like shards of glass. It catches in his throat and he’s disgusted with himself. That he could break down, even a little bit. This is his new life. He chose it and now he’s ashamed of _it_ just like he’s ashamed of everything else and he can’t remember what it’s like not to _hate_ himself.

Roy finally pulls away and Dick thinks that must be it. Roy hates him now, too, and he wants to cry.

“I don’t _care_ about that.” Roy grabs his shoulders with an uncharacteristic gentleness, and Dick finally makes eye contact. The archer has big round doe eyes, something he and Wally had always made fun of him for just because it was such a contradiction to the sharp masculinity of his face and body and personality. And right now those eyes are determined like they always are, and whatever he says next, Dick knows there will be no moving him on it. “I just care that you’re okay, and I refuse to _stop_ just because you’re making shitty decisions, kid.”

 _It’s not as easy as dropping out of school,_ he wants to scream, because Roy makes it sound like that’s the only stupid, messed up thing he’s done. Like it’s just teenage angst and he’s not all torn up and bleeding inside because someone carved him up with a knife and made him cry and scream and _beg_ for mercy—like he’s not ashamed and _humiliated_ and like he doesn’t loath his own existence.

He makes it sound like Dick doesn’t have blood on his hands.

But instead he gives a bitter smile and a broken laugh and he says “Thank you,” because he means it.

When Roy leaves, he promises he won’t tell anyone where to find Dick, especially Bruce, but refuses to keep this all a secret from the team—and says he’s going to at least tell them that Dick is alive and that he’s safe. He tells Jade that he’ll put an arrow through her chest if she lets anything happen to her ward, and then he kisses her so fast Dick almost thinks he imagined it.

“I’ll be seeing you.” And Roy has that determination in his eyes when he says it, so Dick knows he will, and the part of him that wants that so desperately is a little stronger now.

Dick doesn’t give him his hoodie back and he doesn’t ask for it, and he watches through the window as Roy drives away on his motorcycle. He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding when the sound of the engine fades away.

He listens when Jade tells him to close the curtain, and when he curls up under the blankets on his temporary bed, he breathes in the scent of his friend and doesn’t feel ok, but he hates himself just a little bit less and that’s good enough for now.


	2. Heroes Love to Fix Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy's not sure what to tell them, or even how much they should know, but he knows that he has to.

_Room  secure._

Before Roy had invited the group of five into the room with him, he had sworn them all to secrecy, a pre-conversational agreement. And now, standing before him are Wally, Kaldur, Conner, M’gann, and Artemis.

He isn’t particularly fond of Artemis, seeing as she’s his replacement for all intents and purposes, but in all fairness, he’d created the need for one by leaving—and it’s her crazy-ass sister he’s dealing with, so, she probably has a right to know.

Probably.

“What’s the deal, Roy?” Wally crosses his arms, and Roy copies the movement, sighing through his nose.

“Yeah, what’s with all the secrecy?” Conner gestures to the room they’re currently in, locked down and checked for any outside listeners.

“You found something, didn’t you. About him,” M’gann’s eyes get big, and of course she’d be the first to figure it out. He isn’t sure if she read his mind and actually heard him arguing with himself about how to go about telling the team, or if she was just that perceptive.

He is betting on the former.

“Yes.” There’s a collective gasp, or sigh of relief, he’s not sure. They start talking amongst themselves, all except for Wally, who takes a step forward and holds his hands open at his sides, as though asking for answers.

“Where is he? Is he okay? Why hasn’t he _called_ us, at least?” His fellow red head musses up his own hair in frustration, and his eyes never leave Roy’s.

To be honest, Roy isn’t really sure what to tell them. There’s not exactly a kosher way to share that Robin has essentially gone AWOL, hooked up with an assassin and…well, he’s hooked up with Cheshire. What he does beyond that is implied, and if he’s lucky, the Team won’t think that far into it.

Should he tell them what Robin had looked like when he’d found him? That he seemed so distant? Afraid? Broken? Should he mention the scaring and the bruises all over his chest? There’s so many things he could say, but only one that he _will_ say, at least for now—until he can figure out how to tell them the rest, or if he even should.

After all, Robin doesn’t want to be found.

“He’s fine, for now. He’s not alone, someone’s looking after him.”

“Who?! Who’s he with? Roy c’mon man you’ve gotta give us more than that,” Wally looks desperate, and Roy feels himself frowning in response.

“Where is he?” Conner asks, narrowing his eyes and looking straight into Roy’s own.

“He’s…” Roy sighs and rubs his temples. “Listen. He’s not in the best headspace right now, and…he doesn’t want to be found. Not at all.”

“Did you tell Batman?” Kaldur asks calmly, though Roy doesn’t miss the undertone. He’s worried, as he should be.

“No. He asked me not to tell anyone at all. I said I was at least going to tell you all that he was okay. Nothing more than that.” That was a mistake. He should have realized before he said it that this was a group that didn’t take well to definite ‘no’s. That was how they’d gotten started, after all.

“But _you’ve_ seen him,” Artemis levels him with a heated look, and he doesn’t know if it’s in their shared blood or what, but she looks just the way Jade does when she knows he’s holding back, and it creeps him out a little.

“Yes. I saw him a few nights ago.”

“And you’re just telling us now?” Wally again, sounding angry this time. “He’s been missing for two months and you found him and now you’re telling us you saw him, _days_ ago? Why didn’t you tell us where he was the second you laid eyes on him?! What the hell, Roy?” his eyebrows are pushing down over his green eyes, and his mouth is twisted up like he’s thinking about punching Roy with those fists he’s got clenched so tight.

“How did you find him,” Kaldur places a hand on Wally’s shoulder, and again, tries to remain calm.

“I…” Roy sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. Well, this was the reason he bothered to invite Artemis into the room, this was the part she deserved to know. “I’ve been tracking him, for a while. Though not directly.” Conner in particular looks unimpressed with this explanation, and rightfully so.

He’s dancing around the truth.

“You...may have noticed I keep a close eye on the League of Shadows.” Again, Conner in particular is unimpressed, because _obviously_ he keeps an eye on the League of Shadows. This is not a secret. To anyone, not even the League themselves. “Well… the last few months I’ve been tracking him by proxy. Because I’ve been tracking Cheshire.”

The room is silent.

Until it isn’t.

“ _What_?” Artemis looks like she’s been shot, and Wally seems as though he might really punch Roy, now. He takes a precautionary step back.

“He’s with—” M’gann covers her mouth.

“He’s with _Cheshire_?!” Wally grits out.

“And you _left_ him there?” Conner stands up straighter, like he always seems to when he’s angry. Roy hasn’t spent all that much time with the Super clone, but this is a tick that he’s seen enough to recognize. Conner is always angry, and he can relate.

“Roy,” Kaldur looks disappointed, or like he’s waiting for Roy to slap him on the back and say _just kidding!_ Even though they both know he’s not.

“Are you kidding me?” Wally gives him a hard shove to the chest. “You left him with that crazy—!”

“He’s there of his own free will!” Roy’s voice raises, and the others silence. “He…he wants to be with her. After what happened he doesn’t want to be around people who are going to treat him like he’s fragile.”

“We wouldn’t!” M’gann looks almost hurt, that Robin would expect pity out of them. But, of course he would, Jade said it herself. Heroes love to fix things. It’s the truth.

“Yes, you would. If I hadn’t been so relieved to see him alive I might’ve done the same. But he’s not wrong.” Roy looks at each of them, and they appear to be contemplating this.

“I…I understand why he wants to be away from us,” Artemis crosses her arms under her chest, almost like she’s protecting herself, because, he thinks, she probably _does_ understand. “But to be with _her_?” Her nose wrinkles at the thought.

“I’m not entirely sure what his reasoning is, either.” He replies softly, and he finds himself surprised that Artemis is the most rational about this whole thing. But maybe he should have expected that. If Jade’s childhood—what little he knows about it—is any indicator as to what Artemis grew up with, then she’s probably quite familiar with pity and self-loathing.

Her father wasn’t exactly a fairy prince, and as a result neither of his daughters were fairy princesses, either.

“We should go get him; you should’ve taken him with you when you left!” Wally steps towards him again and Roy steps back. Not because he’s afraid of Wally or what he might do, but because he knows himself and that his reaction may be a bit…over the top, despite his attempts to rehab his own anger issues.

“You’re not hearing me, this is what he wants. He needs time to put himself back together, it’s not like he was on vacation with the Light.” Roy pushes his bangs back, even though they really weren’t in his face. It’s something he’s always done when he’s been uncomfortable. “It’s hard to bounce back from that, even for Robin.”

“Dick. You mean it’s hard for Dick.” Conner corrects. “We all know who he is, don’t bother pretending we don’t.”

It’s true, they’d sort of put together his identity when reports of a missing Dick Grayson hit the news. It was right around the time Robin had run off. It made sense that they would, especially seeing as Batman and Bruce Wayne haven’t exactly been…indistinguishable from one another. Both halves of his identity have been acting much the same, and while they may be young and inexperienced, the Team isn’t that dense.

That and Wally probably told them. He’s always had a big mouth.

“Yes, it’s hard for Dick. Listen, you guys didn’t see him. And even though Cheshire isn’t the _best_ choice…” he sighs, he knows from experience. “It’s what he wants right now. If we drag him home and try to make him all better, like nothing ever happened, he’s never gonna forgive us for that. We’ve gotta let him sort out his own problems. He’s not a child.”’

“He’s _thirteen_!” Wally yells, and Roy can see this tearing him up. Dick is his best friend, and he’d chosen Cheshire. Roy knows how that feels.

“And you’re _sixteen_ , Wallace.” He snaps, getting frustrated now. “But like you he’s capable of making his own damn decisions. We don’t have to like them, but that’s just the way it is.”

It’s over two hours later that Artemis comes back to the room, and secures it a second time. They’d spent an hour trying to pry more information out of Roy, with no luck, before they’d all given up and left him alone.

But she came back.

“Roy…” she sighs. “I know we don’t really get along. And I know you don’t like me, but. You know me. Or at least, you know things about me.” She gives him a particular kind of look, and he knows what she’s referring to.

“I know Jade is your sister. Yes,” he locks eyes with her, and her expression is just as hard as it was before. “She told me.” It was afterwards that he saw the resemblance; it was in the way they spoke, in the way they moved. Their expressions.

 She nods. “You should know that we, that _I_ care about him. I got to know him at school, as Dick Grayson, not as Robin.” Artemis rubs the side of her neck and locks eyes with Roy. “Just…make sure he’s okay.”

Roy stares and her for a minute before nodding.

“I promise, he’ll be fine.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> So...more coherent hopefully? I really do love this universe. It's a lot of fun to write for.


End file.
